find the right way
getty
Artificial intelligence is challenging one of the central assumptions behind modern business education: that business schools are the primary gateway to business knowledge and management skills.
For decades, business schools have created value by organizing and providing information. Students paid to learn accounting, finance, marketing, operations, strategy, and leadership from professors with expertise and organizational credibility.
But AI is rapidly changing the economics of knowledge, especially as access to information, analytics, and even better academic performance becomes increasingly commoditized.
Entrepreneurs and managers now have near-instantaneous access to explanations, frameworks, financial analysis, market research, strategy simulations, and operational guidance. Business schools themselves are increasingly recognizing that AI is weakening traditional employability signals. At the same time, research shows that employers are increasingly valuing skills over degrees in AI-related roles.
That doesn’t mean business education will disappear. But it could reorder business education into four very different paths, each serving a different purpose in the economy.
#1.Corporate business education: Low risk. Moderate growth potential.
Modern business schools are primarily designed to support large companies.
Undergraduate business programs teach you the fundamentals of organizational management, including accounting, finance, logistics, marketing, operations, and human resources. MBA programs have been particularly popular because they help graduates from a variety of fields obtain managerial and leadership roles within companies.
This model worked very well during the rise of large industrial and global corporations.
However, AI may undermine one of its traditional advantages: information delivery.
Companies are increasingly able to train their employees internally using AI-driven learning systems customized to their industry, software, processes, and operational needs. Many employees may ultimately wonder whether four years of extensive undergraduate business education provides enough added value compared to learning while earning within an organization.
Elite institutions like Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Management will continue to be powerful because they offer more than information: elite networks, signaling value, ecosystem access, leadership pipelines, and more.
But AI could force many traditional business programs to justify something much more valuable than just knowledge transfer: development, judgment, leadership, and execution under uncertainty.
#2. Small business education: Moderate risk. Moderate growth potential.
As business schools expanded beyond corporate executive training, small business education emerged.
These programs focused on helping entrepreneurs launch and operate small ventures, family businesses, local businesses, and self-employment opportunities. The focus is often on business planning, accounting basics, operations, and practical management skills.
AI could increase the demand for this type of education.
Advances in technology are lowering barriers to entry, and more individuals may choose independent business ownership over traditional employment. AI tools can significantly reduce startup costs for sales, marketing, software development, customer service, bookkeeping, and research.
At the same time, the rapid growth of AI-based learning and reskilling platforms suggests that education itself is becoming more decentralized and skills-focused. However, entrepreneurs still need operational capabilities.
- Cash flow management
- pricing service
- understand taxes
- hire employees
- Customer management
- Perform daily tasks.
This maintains the demand for practical business education that focuses on operational competencies. Community colleges, technical schools, local entrepreneurship centers, and online learning platforms are likely to be the primary providers of this type of education.
#3. Venture Capital Entrepreneurial Education: Very High Risk. Very high growth potential.
Starting primarily in the 1980s, venture capital became deeply integrated into entrepreneurial education, especially at elite universities with close ties to institutional investors. The program increasingly emphasizes:
- venture scaling
- rapid growth
- pitch contest
- Fundraising activities
- Startup ecosystem
- Venture-backed technology company.
This model has produced some extraordinary companies and is still very powerful within elite entrepreneurial ecosystems like Silicon Valley.
However, there are also structural limitations.
Sophisticated venture capitalists often invest only after an entrepreneur has demonstrated evidence, traction, asymmetry, or exceptional founder ability.
As more entrepreneurs become aware of this reality, demand for purely VC-oriented entrepreneurship education outside elite ecosystems may wane.
The primary beneficiaries of VC-oriented entrepreneurial education will continue to be schools embedded within dense entrepreneurial ecosystems, with direct access to sophisticated investors, experienced founders, and large growth networks.
#4.Founder and CEO Education: Missing Quadrant — Moderate Risk. very high growth potential
This fourth quadrant is the least developed within modern business schools, but may become the most important in the AI era.
Traditional corporate education prepares students to work within established organizations. Small business education focuses on managerial independence. The Venture Capital Pathway teaches founders how to pursue rapid expansion through funding from institutional investors.
Founder and CEO education focuses on something very different: building high-growth ventures through talent development, strategic fit, disciplined financing, and maintaining control.
Deferred capital leverage
This distinction is important because many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs have followed this exact path. My research on billion dollar entrepreneurs found that about 94% avoided venture capital altogether or deferred until they had proven their business model and leadership abilities and were not replaced as CEO (https://www.forbes.com/sites/dileeprao/2025/06/17/why-94-of-billion-dollar-founders-rejected-these-vc-commandments/). This includes founding CEOs like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Brian Chesky, who secured influence and remained in control by delaying VC until after Leadership Aha, as well as those who avoided VC, like Sam Walton, Michael Dell, and Mark Cuban.
These entrepreneurs didn’t necessarily grow slowly. In many cases, they have built some of the largest and most dominant companies in the world.
The difference wasn’t the ambition to grow. The difference was how to scale the venture while maintaining control with smart funding strategies.
Venture capital-backed ventures often optimize for rapid valuation growth and investor exit.
Founder-CEO ventures often optimize strategic fit, smart growth, market dominance, cash flow, dilution reduction, and competency control.
The changing value of AI
In the age of AI, this distinction is paramount. As knowledge becomes a commodity, competitive advantage shifts to quality and speed of execution, leadership, and strategic adaptability.
Ironically, while AI commoditizes entrepreneurial knowledge, it has the potential to increase the importance of entrepreneurial leadership.
This is an educational gap that business schools are failing to address. Rather than teaching founders how to pitch to investors, education should focus on the process of finding the strategic fit and skills to scale the business before dilution occurs or avoid VC altogether. This focus has shifted demand to programs that teach entrepreneurs how to:
- take off with limited capital
- Scale intelligently without unnecessary expense
- maintain control After passing through important growth stages
- deploy capital Strategically.
conclusion
The question of the survival of business schools is not whether AI will replace them.
The questions are: What becomes valuable when information is free and commoditized?
The answer may determine which educational models and institutions will thrive in the AI era, and which will gradually lose relevance.
My view: AI dramatically reduces the value of standardized business knowledge. At the same time, it increases the value of rare human abilities such as strategic judgment, entrepreneurial leadership, and performing under extreme uncertainty.
In the AI era, information is overflowing. ability becomes scarce.
